Muirin007

📚 My AO3

Fics in progress:

On A Whim (Phantom of the Opera) What In Me Is Dark, Illumine (Frankenstein, 2025)

🎨 Art Tag

💚 Other places I hang out:

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Hello hello! I hope you're doing well, too!

Oh, this is super fun to answer! As far as my art style goes, like most kids of the 90s (the 1990s...not...not the 1890s, although spiritually, I am an 1890s person), I was absolutely enamored with Disney, especially the films Glen Keane led. Beauty and the Beast (...duh) and Tarzan completely embedded themselves in my kid brain and made me go, "That is what I want to do, if not for a career, then at least just to do it."

Tarzan, especially, was so tremendously influential on my artwork and it's also one of my favorite stories (a misfit and outsider finding his place and exploring what it truly means to be human? HOW NOVEL FOR ME...although I could never finish the original novels because holy RACISM, Batman). Anatomy is also forever and always my first love, and boy, was the anatomy work on that film spectacular.

I have the art book and as a kid, I found now-ancient Livejournals (and I may be misremembering but pretty sure Glen Keane himself had a blog ages ago) with these concept sketches. I printed them out and drew them over and over and over.

It was also one of those films teen me saw myself in big time. A lot of the themes hit home personally, and it was also everything I ever wanted to do with my art. (And I did feel quite vindicated seeing a lead character who had the same head and face shape as mine, lol. FINALLY, SOME POSITIVE REPRESENTATION for us large-chinned, aquiline nosed folks!!!! FINALLY!)

Outside of Disney, I absolutely poured over Brett Helquist's Series of Unfortunate Events illustrations, as well as the Victorian engravings they drew from, especially the 19th century cartoons in Punch. The line work is so yummy that I still go back to it in my own work over and over and over, albeit usually with less finesse.

My parents also had this encyclopedia collection of artbooks featuring works from the world's great museums, and I'd spend hours pouring over those, too! All the old greats, especially figure studies. I was a massive fan of elongated Mannerism really early on.

Discovered Gustave Doré in late middle school and fell head-over-heels in love, and that led straight to Bernie Wrightson, who was very much of the Doré school.

Reading Wrightson's illustrated Frankenstein for the first time in 10th grade was spiritual, dude. It was another Tarzan moment for me, art-wise (It's why, while Phantom is the absolute bedrock of my brain and soul, Frankenstein is whatever is under the bedrock, especially Wrightson's). The man was a genius. I can't ever hope to approach anything resembling his work, but I think every artist interested in complex line work absolutely must study Wrightson.

Look at that. By hand, meticulously, and he did it just for fun outside of his normal comic illustration work. It's beyond remarkable.

I was also a weird kid--I grew up on a steady drip of Turner Classic Movies and TV Land and Lucille Ball and all the early vaudevillian greats were my favorites, so expression in artwork was always, always my north star, and it still is! Looney Tunes and Chuck Jones and Tex Avery and, way farther back, we heart you, Joseph Ducreux.

As far as writing goes, I'm a Romantic at heart, with a capital R. Keats is my favorite poet ever. Read When I have fears in early high school, thought, "Oh, same," then rented a Keats book from the library and ho boy, ho boy. I was doomed. It was one of those experiences where you feel like the author is speaking directly to you. His work is so lush and tactile and sensual. Reading Keats is really a full-body experience, and his poetry (and letters, which are fantastic) still have a big influence on my own writing.

I also just adore Victorian lit. I know it's not for everyone. But my God, is it for me. I'm a Brontë person biiiiiig time. I also read Wuthering Heights for the first time in ninth or tenth grade (like Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights is prime ninth-or-tenth-grade reading material, along with Phantom, lol) and oh my holy God, I was just gobsmacked. Lush and again, very sensual and physical with a terrible and wonderful darkness.

And because I was firmly living in gothic/Victorian/Romantic land, I of course fell in love with Anne Rice. The first three Vampire Chronicles books are masterpieces of horror, they really are. And again: physical, fleshy, sensual, almost hallucinogenic, with beyond brilliant and human characters. That kind of weird lushness brings me back again and again. (Also see Lincoln In the Bardo. One of those brain-opening books that made me go, "WHAT?" in the best way.)

As a kid, I also got a kick out of Meg Cabot books, especially The Mediator series. Anyone else remember those? JESSE, MY BELOVED!

I've only tiptoed into Terry Pratchett--a CRIME, I know--but I'm already very much enamored with him.

And again, Lemony Snicket's dry, quasi-Victorian, quasi-British humor stuck with me massively. Also, one hill I will die on for the rest of my days: the Junie B. Jones books are some of the finest specimens of humor we have as a species. No other book series captures weird kids so perfectly, especially . I still cry laughing whenever I read those. Oh my God, dude. So any time I'm not trying to be Dramatique ™ and Literary ™ with my writing, it's all for Junie B., baby. Queen of my life, queen of my soul, top ten funniest people of all time.

Also, while we're talking about Junie B., the illustrations were incredibly influential for me. Look at this! Look at the personality in the line work here! Denise Brunkus, you goddess.

Ha, it's so silly and I love all the additions people made in the comments and reblogs to pieces! (This one, if anyone reading this is curious. People are so freaking funny here). If I didn't have to work a day job and got full-time funding, I would absolutely love to make this into a graphic novel and then an animated pilot. The potential is endless.

I think it could work both ways: set in the late 18th century or set in modern day--or a hybrid of the two where it's 1818 but there are decidedly anachronistic college frat boy things just for the bit.

Regardless, the Creature has to be firmly a late 18th century man. I need the dichotomy of language. I need these college boys latching onto their giant Wanderer Above A Sea of Fog buddy who says things like, "Thou canst know the agony that splits my head in two."

And one of his buddies in the dorm goes, "Dude, what's up?"

And the Creature grimaces and puts in head in his hands and pops a Tylenol and says, "Yon kegger, David."

All the others guffaw and David slaps the Creature on his back.

"Fuckin' A, man, we told you to take it easy last night!"

A hand finds his cheek. It is warm. It is hers. It is shaking and it is hers, touching his cheek. She stills, just as he has, and she is looking at him through a veil of violet, who hurt you, in the candlelight, isn’t it beautiful? on the floor nestled in furs, in the cottage, in this cottage, here. Her eyes are bright, swimming, her breath hitching. Her hand is warm and it is on his cheek, and he leans into it as if he may dissolve into her palm.  “You,” she whispers. Her voice is as soft and as clear as he remembers. “It’s you.”

LOL, the theme song is right: OH! The misery!

Dude, I just…oh my God. Silco and Vander. I just….